o'clock, when the fiercest
battle yet known on the American continent had been raging for several
hours.

Grant and his staff, as they rode away from his headquarters, heard the
booming of cannon in the direction of Shiloh. Some of them thought it
was a mere skirmish, but it came continuously, like rolling thunder, and
their trained ears told them that it rose from a line miles in length.
One seeks to penetrate the mind of a commanding general at such a time,
and see what his feelings were. Again the battle had been joined, and
was at its height, and he away!

Those trained ears told him also that the rolling thunder of the cannon
was steadily moving toward them. It could mean only that the Northern
army had been driven from its camp and that the Southern army was
pushing its victory to the utmost. In those moments his agony must have
been intense. His great army not only attacked, but beaten, and he not
there! He and his staff urged their horses forward, seeking to gain from
them new ounces of speed, but the country was difficult. The hills were
rough and there were swamps and mire. And, as they listened, the roar
of battle steadily came nearer and nearer. There was no break in the
Northern retreat. The sweat, not of heat but of mental agony, stood upon
their faces. Grant was not the only one who suffered.

Now they met some of those stragglers who flee from every battlefield,
no matter what the nation. Their faces were white with fear and they
cried out that the Northern army was destroyed. Officers cursed them and
struck at them with the flats of their swords, but they dodged the blows
and escaped into the bushes. There was no time to pursue them. Grant and
his staff never ceased to ride toward the storm of battle which raged
far and wide around the little church of Shiloh.

The stream of fugitives increased, and now they saw swarms of men who
stood here and there, not running, but huddled and irresolute. Never
did Fortune, who brought this, her favorite, from the depths, bring him
again in her play so near to the verge of destruction. When he came upon
the field, the battle seemed wholly lost, and the whole world would have
cried that he was to blame.

But the bulldog in Grant was never of stauncher breed than on that
day. His face turned white, and he grew sick at the sight of the awful
slaughter. A bullet broke the small sword at his side, but he did not
flinch. Preserving the stern calm that always marked h